Opinion | A new reality is coming

America is “coming back.” 

Donald Trump said so on Monday during the inauguration. Tommy Tuberville said so in a statement released shortly after Trump took the oath. Kay Ivey said so in a statement of her own. 

Katie Britt said the American Dream is back. Dale Strong said the country is back. 

Trump promised to bring back faith and wealth and freedom and stop America’s decline. 

None of them promised a return of the one thing we actually need. 

Reality. 

Because, pardon me, but what in the ever loving hell are y’all talking about? 

An America in “decline”? An America that’s unsafe? An America that isn’t prosperous? An America that isn’t free? An America that needs to be saved? 

Where do y’all live? 

Because here in the real world – the actual America that people work, play, raise their kids in and live everyday life in – things are about as good as you could hope for. Especially just four years after some deranged lunatic tried to overthrow the government after mismanaging a pandemic and sending the nation spiraling into an almost certain recession. 

Y’all remember that, right? When the economists all thought Joe Biden was going to inherit an economy in recession and the country was certain to suffer? 

Well, what actually happened in the world outside of the conservative bubble was inflation that was no worse than anywhere else in the world at its peak and that fell much faster than in almost every other industrialized nation. Aside from that, the last four years have been a steady stream of economic accomplishments and American growth. 

But there’s no need to take this “lib’s” word for it. We can simply go to the real life stats. 

Job growth under Biden has been record setting. Nearly 17 million jobs were created in Biden’s four years – a number unmatched even during the bounce back from the Great Recession. That’s a replacement of every job lost during the pandemic, plus another 5-6 million. 

GDP growth during his four years has been nearly the strongest in American history, and was quite clearly the strongest sustained growth in American history, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. 

For the first time in two generations, wage growth for American workers out-paced the growth of executive pay. And real wage growth topped inflation by nearly 2-to-1. 

Those numbers are reflected in Americans’ spending. Despite crying over the price of eggs on their way to the polls, those same voters made this past holiday season the most prosperous in American history, spending nearly $1 trillion. That was a 4-percent increase over the previous record year – the year before, 2023. 

Americans saved more. Made more. Invested more. And they brought home much, much more in Biden’s four years than at any point in Trump’s previous presidency. 

American manufacturing, which Trump promised to bring back, actually returned in Biden’s four years as well. The Biden administration created more than 700,000 manufacturing jobs, erasing the losses under Trump and helping to boost the pay of average American workers. (By the way, a year before the pandemic, the Trump administration was watching the country’s manufacturing jobs decline rapidly, losing more than 100,000 of those jobs in 2019.)

It should be noted that much of that growth is tied directly to the Biden administration’s infrastructure plan, which has helped to rebuild roads and bridges, lay thousands of miles of broadband internet cable and secure dams. 

Oh, and one other small economic note: We’re also producing more American oil than at any other time in the country’s history. Including Trump’s four years. It’s so much that many experts question whether Trump, through any action taken, could manage to increase output. 

But I guess none of that economic success matters if you aren’t safe in your homes or safe on your streets. If you can’t, as Trump so eloquently put it, walk across the street to buy bread without getting shot dead. 

So, a quick peek at those violent crime stats does in fact show a recent jump in the violent crime rate. However, that largest jump in a generation came in 2020 … when Trump was president. 

In the meantime, Joe Biden presided over a 50-year low in the violent crime rate in 2022, a near record in 2023 and what looks to be another near record in 2024. I guess people generally aren’t doing a lot of killing when they’re making plenty of money and climbing out of poverty. 

 But maybe it’s the freedom thing. Lots of Republicans said that freedom was coming back, so maybe it’s been in decline. And maybe Donald Trump and the Republicans are going to save it. 

Their plans to save it are by restricting non-Christian faiths, banning certain library books, curbing the teaching of America’s history of discrimination, restricting how Americans can identify, “monitoring” bathroom usage and banning IVF. 

To quote Martina McBride … let freedom ring. 

Look, I can’t explain to you how Democrats couldn’t manage to convince all of these people that what was actually happening was actually happening. I can’t understand why so many people were so thoroughly convinced that the world just a few feet outside of their immediate lives was going to hell. 

But I do know this: As I watched the thousands of Trump supporters brace themselves against record cold outside of the indoor inauguration, I saw the five oligarchs – America’s richest men whose combined wealth is more than roughly 60 percent of the 335 million people living in this country – take their nice, warm seats on the front row. It was a sight unimaginable just a few years ago – an American president so obviously placating to the wealthy and forsaking the average worker. 

I hope those people in that bubble are prepared for their new reality.